Procedural Unfairness Research Articles

Article: Assessing the Impact of Corruption on Taxpayer Perceptions of Fairness: Insights from SMEs in Uganda

Corruption can undermine taxpayers’ trust in the fairness of how public funds are allocated and tax procedures are carried out. While the relationship between corruption and tax system unfairness is largely unexplored, a significant body of knowledge covers these constructs in isolation. This study assesses the influence of corruption on Ugandan small and medium enterprises (SMEs’) perception of tax fairness. The authors use a thematic analysis on semi-structured interview data to assess the effects of corruption on tax fairness perceptions. The findings reveal four types of corruption: petty corruption, petty tax corruption, political corruption, and grand corruption. These have significant influence on income tax unfairness perceptions among SME firms. Tax and government officers as well as the political elite who demand bribes, embezzle taxpayers’ funds, and discriminate among taxpayers based on tribal sentiments incite taxpayers’ distributive and procedural tax unfairness perceptions. The results demonstrate that the government must strive to create an honest bureaucracy and tax administration to improve tax fairness perceptions. This can be done by allowing anti-corruption agencies to work professionally and independently of political influence.

Limiting support for environmental policies: Unfairness is a more critical barrier than cost and ineffectiveness.

Costs and policy-specific beliefs, such as effectiveness and fairness, are central factors for supporting environmental taxes. Less is known about how much each of these factors is limiting support. Across four experiments, I investigate to which extent high costs, ineffectiveness, and unfairness constrain support for environmental taxes. Results consistently demonstrate that perceived unfairness poses a greater barrier to support than extensive costs or ineffectiveness. These findings were robust across three environmental taxes (meat tax, plastic tax, and carbon tax), across three cultures (USA, UK, and India), and were replicated using a representative US sample. Furthermore, delving deeper into the consequences of perceived unfairness, results showed that distributional unfairness was a stronger barrier to support than procedural unfairness. Beyond limiting support, being presented with an unfair tax proposal led participants to perceive the tax as less effective and to express lower trust in policymakers than when receiving a fairer tax proposal.

Linking Workplace Unfairness with Urban Withdrawal Intentions: The Moderating Role of Urban Identification

The mobility of skilled employees from developing to developed cities is a prominent phenomenon in China. However, little is known about whether and how micro factors (e.g., unfair treatment) in the workplace affect employees’ cross-city mobility. The aim of this study is thus to investigate the effect of employees’ perceived workplace unfairness on their intentions to withdraw from the city where they work, specifically, to shed light on the moderating role of urban identification in this effect. Through a survey of 453 skilled employees working in developing cities in northeast China, this study reveals that (a) both perceived distributive and procedural unfairness have a positive effect on employees’ urban dissatisfaction, which in turn reinforces their urban withdrawal intention; (b) urban identification can amplify the positive effect of perceived distributive/procedural unfairness on urban dissatisfaction; and (c) the positive joint effect of perceived distributive/procedural unfairness and urban identification on urban dissatisfaction can further carry over to urban withdrawal intentions. This study therefore sheds new lights on how employees’ workplace unfairness shapes their withdrawal intentions toward the city where they work and how their urban identification moderates this process, offering implications for how developing cities and firm managers can retain skilled employees.

Conflicts in real-world labs ‐ Perspectives of critical and ambivalent residents on a temporary public space redesign project in Berlin

Real-world labs make the mobility transition tangible for residents. However, these experiences are not always positive, and often local conflicts arise. Based on in-depth interviews, the authors show that perceived procedural unfairness as well as the redistribution of space are the main drivers of a sceptical attitude towards redesign projects.Real-world labs (RwLs) are often used to explore and foster the mobility transition. Many RwLs dealing with mobility transition temporarily reallocate public spaces from motorized to active transport or to leisure activities. While some residents accept and enjoy the changes, others react with scepticism, rejection, or protest. This can lead to conflicts. Controversial perceptions and conflicts among residents make a permanent redesign rather challenging for the administration and the politicians. In this paper the authors investigate the related conflict types and counterarguments by studying the case of a temporary redesign of an intersection in Berlin. Based on in-depth interviews, they untangle procedural, distributional, and identity conflicts which might underlie the critical and ambivalent perceptions of residents. An abundance of conflict issues pertaining to procedural and distributional conflicts are revealed and emphasize the role of the RwL process.

Does Procedural Fairness Influence Evaluations of Government Efforts to Combat Gender-Based Violence? Evidence from Brazil

AbstractDoes information about the way victims of gender-based violence (GBV) are treated by the police influence evaluations of government policies to combat gender-based violence? I theorize that because most citizens have incomplete information about such policies, information about procedural fairness should be given more weight when forming evaluations of the government’s performance in this domain. Using original experiments embedded in public opinion surveys collected from Brazil, I find that information about procedural unfairness powerfully predicts more critical evaluations of GBV laws and the government’s performance in helping victims. In addition, these critical opinions influence bystander intervention attitudes. Mediation analysis confirms that views of procedural unfairness are critical in explaining these effects. The implications of the findings for the implementation of specialized services are discussed in the results and conclusion.

Non-attendance at a Crown Court Appeal and Procedural Unfairness

Non-attendance at a Crown Court Appeal and Procedural Unfairness

Online collective action: Procedural unfairness and action support as predictors based on a dual pathway model

To investigate the social-psychological mechanism of online collective action, we explored the impacts of procedural unfairness and action support in accordance with the dual pathway model of coping with collective disadvantage. Our results indicated that manipulated procedural unfairness and action support independently predicted online collective action intentions in protesting against electrical power restrictions in dormitories during winter for Chinese university students. Procedural unfairness predicted this via emotionfocused coping (group-based anger) but not via problem-focused coping (group efficacy), whereas action support had a facilitative effect via both emotion- and problem-focused coping. Our findings have both theoretical and practical implications for the mobilization, organization, and prevention of and intervention in online collective action.

Informed Consent to Online Standard Form Agreements

This article examines the issues associated with online consent to ‘take it or leave it’ contracts, also known as standard from agreements. It does this by describing the concepts of standard form agreement and their deviations from bilateral contracts. It also sets out the meaning of informed consent. With these concepts established, the article analyses informed consent in online standard form agreements and provides an analysis of the factors impacting informed consent. The article also draws a distinction between unfairness and unconscionability. The article demonstrates that courts and regulators look the other way when it comes to recognizing substantive unfairness and unconscionability in online standard form agreements. It discusses the legal, economic, behavioural and social dynamics of informed consent in the context of the Australian marketplace. The article demonstrates that, in Australia, the focus on procedural unfairness and procedural unconscionability as threshold requirements have prevented the notion of informed consent from voiding particular terms. That is, as long as there was notice and an opportunity to read, in Australia the actual content of the terms seems to have limited importance. Australia, Standard Form Agreements, Unconscionability, Unfairness, Informed Consent

"I grabbed my stuff and walked out": Precarious workers' responses and next steps when faced with procedural unfairness during work injury and claims processes.

Purpose:Injured workers can experience adverse effects from work injury and claims processes.Workers may be treated unfairly by employers, compensation boards, and return-to-work coordinators; however,how workers respond to these challenges is unknown. This article describes how injured precarious workersresponded behaviourally and emotionally to procedural unfairness in work injury and claims processes, and whatworkers did next.Methods:Interviews were conducted with thirty-six precariously employedinjured workers recruited in Ontario through social media, email, cold calling, word-of-mouth, and the “snowball”method. Thematic code summaries were analyzed to identify how precarious workers responded to procedural unfairness.Results:Workers went through all or most of these five stages (not always linearly)when faced with procedural unfairness: (1) passive, (2) fought back, (3) quit pursuit of claim, (4) quit job, and (5)won or got further in fight. Feeling confused, angry, frustrated, unsupported, disappointed, determined, optimistic,and wary were common emotions.Conclusions:Identifying unfairness and its emotional,behavioral, and material effects on workers is important to understand implications for compensation systems.Understanding and recognizing unfairness can equip employers, legal representatives, compensation boards, andphysicians, to address and prevent it, and provide worker resources. Policy changes can ensure accountability andconsequences to unfairness initiators.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10926-022-10058-3.

Control of Unfair Terms Under Cypriot Contract Law

The introduction of the EU Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Directive in the legal system of Cyprus was the first instrument specifically dealing with the problems that arise with standard form contracts and the issue of consent. However, the Directive only generated caselaw approximately twenty years after its adoption, whereas the principle-based approach of the test for unfairness (significant imbalance test and good faith requirement) was interpreted in the common law notion of absence of dishonesty. Hence, Cypriot courts interpreted good faith as “honesty in fact”. Under this interpretation, it seems that both procedural and substantive unfairness are not captured under the test. It is understood that whereas the statute codifying the contract law of Cyprus has incorporated the [civil law] will theory of contracts, no tools for the invalidation and scrutiny of terms that may be deemed unfair were provided. The statute placed considerable emphasis on procedural fairness, however, Cypriot courts seemed unwilling to adapt their approach and deal with the problems that standard form contracting poses, failing also to follow the developments in the UK. Thus, even after the adoption of EU consumer law directives, Cypriot courts show an unwillingness to scrutinize the parties’ initial allocation of risk, even though such allocation was done in a standardized manner by one party. Despite the mixed character of the legal system, consumer law directives and the introduction of content control can be seen as legal irritants.

Can Job Stressors Activate Amoral Manipulation? A Weekly Diary Study

This study investigates whether job stressors such as role ambiguity, procedural unfairness, and perceived competition may prompt high Machiavellian employees to use amoral manipulation at work. We also examine whether these manipulative behaviors are consequently related to their own task performance and affiliative citizenship behaviors. A weekly diary study was conducted among 111 Dutch employees over five consecutive working weeks, resulting in 446 assessed occasions. Using a multilevel moderated mediation model, we found that the relationship between weekly job stressors and weekly amoral manipulation (AM) was contingent on trait AM, when the job stressor was role ambiguity (but not when the job stressor was either weekly procedural unfairness or weekly perceived competition). Our results also revealed significant indirect effects of weekly role ambiguity on weekly task performance and weekly display of courtesy through state AM, when trait AM was high. Our findings suggest that role ambiguity activates high Machiavellian employees’ manipulative behaviors at work, which in turn leads to impaired task performance and less courtesy toward others during the same working week.

Collective Narcissism and Perceptions of the (Il)legitimacy of the 2020 US Election

Abstract Recent work suggests that collective narcissism—an exaggerated, unrealistic belief in an in-group’s greatness that demands constant external validation—is a reliable predictor of authoritarian-populist hostility toward democratic norms, processes, and outcomes. In the present study, we use a recent survey of American adults to examine the relationship between collective narcissism and perceptions that the 2020 election in the US was illegitimate. We find evidence that those high in national collective narcissism are more likely to endorse a number of beliefs about the illegitimacy of the 2020 US election, including greater perception of fraud, procedural unfairness, and inaccurate vote counting. Importantly, we find that this relationship is strongest among those whose identities were most threatened by a loss of power due to the 2020 presidential outcome, i.e., Republicans and conservative identifiers.

Unfair, uncertain, and unwilling: How decision-making unfairness and unclear job tasks reduce problem-focused voice behavior, unless there is task conflict

In an attempt to expand extant literature devoted to employees' voice behavior, the current research unpacks the connection between their experience of procedural unfairness, such that organizational decision-making lacks transparency, and their problem-focused voice behavior. In this link, the authors predict that job ambiguity functions as a mediator, and coworker task conflict takes a moderating role. Survey data, collected among employees in a large Portuguese retail organization, affirm that perceptions about unfair decision policies can curtail employees’ propensities to raise their voice about organizational failures, because they develop the belief that their employer is failing to provide sufficient job-related information. If they can exchange conflicting viewpoints with others though, this detrimental process might not proceed. Organizations should take care to avoid accusations of unclear job roles, because they create a route by which frustrations about opaque decision-making can escalate into employee complacency; they also should encourage productive idea clashes within their ranks to help block that route.

Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSiR): Does CEO Compensation Matter?

This paper examines the relationship between CEO compensation and corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) by examining the perceptions of fairness or unfairness of CEO compensation structure. Infusing the integrative model of organizational trust with the bounded self-interest agency theory and the stakeholder-agency theory, we progress the distributive unfairness hypothesis and the procedural unfairness hypothesis to suggest that perceptions of distributive and procedural unfairness in compensation structure influence the severity with which CEOs view firms as opportunistic towards them. Using a sample of 8,873 observations across 849 U.S. firms between 2001-2018 and sophisticated empirics, we theorize and empirically demonstrate how CEO perceptions of firm opportunism trigger negative reciprocity behaviours, manifesting in increased firm-level CSiR. Furthermore, we find the prevalence of reinforcing and counter-balancing effects through which the interactions between distributive and procedural unfairness impact the CEO compensation-CSiR relationship. Our paper contributes to the literatures on CEO compensation and corporate misconduct and has important implications for the design of executive compensation packages.

Compulsory yet Fair Acquisition of Land: Assessing Procedural Fairness of Compulsory Acquisition Process in India

ABSTRACT Coerciveness built in the process of compulsory acquisition (CA) induces a perception of unfairness among the affected landowners and may alleviate with fair compensation and due process. This research focuses on the latter and aims to identify issues of unfairness perceived by the affected landowners using six criteria of procedural fairness from the legal literature including ethicality, representativeness, bias-suppression, accuracy, correctability and consistency. While procedural unfairness is a concern in many geographies (see for Scotland), this research adopts a case-study approach given the geographical specificity of CA laws and examines Indian process for its relatively recent modification under the newly enacted CA act of 2013. The paper undertakes a qualitative content analysis of court case reports on the Bangalore–Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project and interview transcripts of forty-seven landowners whose land was acquired using Karnataka Industrial Area Development Act of 1966 (a precursor to the new act). This research argues that fixing following issues is crucial to improving the landowners’ perception of fairness: ethical behaviour by the acquirers; representativeness of the affected landowners; quality information throughout the process; accountability of acquirers; neutral review of objections; unbiased assessment of compensation; and inexpensive conflict resolutions.

Procedural unfairness occasioned by unreasonable delay in finalising a disciplinary inquiry: Stokwe v Member of the Executive Council: Department of Education, Eastern Cape [2018] ZACC 3

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim which denotes that if legal redress is available to a party that has suffered, or is suffering an injustice but is not dispensed timeously, it has the same effect as having no redress at all (see Steenkamp J sentiments in Road Accident Fund v Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration [2016] ZALCJHB 139 par 5; see also the definition at Definitions and Translations https://www.definitions.net/definition/justice+delayed+is+justice+denied (accessed 2019-09-12)). In this context, the maxim is used to emphasise that delays in finalising employment disciplinary processes may amount to a denial of justice. Research shows that unreasonable delays in finalising disciplinary cases affect the health and can even cause excruciating distress on the employees concerned (Van der Bank, Engelbrecht and Strumpher “Perceived Fairness of Disciplinary Procedures in the Public Service Sector: An Exploratory Study: Empirical Research” 2008 6(2) SA Journal of Human Resource Management 8).

A Comparative Analysis of the Regulation of Unfair Terms in Asia

This paper examines the regulation of unfair terms in consumer contracts, as reported by consumer law experts in more than a dozen Asian countries. The comparative analysis proceeds in four parts and draws some comparisons to the regulation of unfair terms in the United States. The first part examines the role of general doctrines of unfairness, specifically the unconscionability and good faith doctrines, as a check on unfair contract terms. The second part looks at the various ways in which the reporting countries address procedural unfairness in consumer contract formation. The third part is a partial taxonomy of the wide variety of substantive terms that are deemed to be unfair in countries across the region. The fourth part discusses the available remedies when a trader includes unfair terms in consumer contracts, ranging from nullifying the unfair term to possible criminal penalties.

Equality of opportunity and the acceptability of outcome inequality

Abstract In many real-world situations, unfairness of outcomes is not directly related to fairness-related properties of individual decisions; it is an unintended consequence of procedures in which individuals interact. Attitudes to such unfairness may be revealed in emotions of anger and resentment rather than in preferences over alternative decision outcomes. We conjecture that inequality is viewed with relatively little disfavour when it results from procedures that allow individuals equal strategic opportunities. We define a concept of procedural fairness which formalises intuitions about equality of opportunity. We report a Vendetta Game experiment in which negative attitudes to inequality can be expressed in costly and counter-productive ‘taking’ of co-players’ assets. A given degree of material inequality induces more taking if the procedure that has generated it is unfair rather than fair. Surprisingly, there is excess taking by players whom procedural unfairness has benefited as well as by those it has harmed.

When academic integrity rules should not apply: a survey of academic staff

This study examines circumstances when academic integrity rules may not apply. To this end, we conducted a multinational survey of teaching, research, administrative and support staff (N = 79). The results suggest that exemptions may be granted on compassionate grounds such as personal welfare, situations where institutional policies are perceived to be unfair or discriminatory, in cases of honest mistakes, and for special activities such as ideological and philosophical debates. Exceptions to academic integrity rules may also be granted to first-time offenders and international students. We argue that inconsistency in policy objectives coupled with differences in staff attitudes, values and beliefs create additional challenges for the implementation of academic integrity measures. However, where policy is perceived to be morally questionable, non-compliance is regarded as an attempt to restore a personal sense of fairness and trust. We further stress that ambiguity of expectations and a disproportionate focus on student action, but not on that of staff, results in an environment where different, and often conflicting, academic integrity practices may operate in parallel leading to even greater inconsistency and procedural unfairness. We discuss the implications and offer recommendations for practice and future research.

Procedural fairness predicts cooperative behaviour for high-self-esteem individuals but not for low-self-esteem individuals.

Cooperation is vital for modern society. Previous studies showed that procedural fairness promotes cooperation; however, they mainly focused on cooperation intention, which may fail to reveal actual cooperative behaviour. Moreover, little is known regarding the personality boundary of the effect of procedural fairness on cooperation. Guided by previous findings that self-esteem increases sensitivity to procedural unfairness, we attempted to explore the moderating effect of self-esteem on the association between procedural fairness and cooperative behaviour. In Experiment 1, 160 participants' self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; procedural fairness was manipulated in two conditions, depending on whether money was allocated in an economic game by rolling the dice twice or an allocator's arbitrary choice. Cooperative behaviour was assessed using the chicken game paradigm. Experiment 2 (148 participants) aimed to replicate and extend the results of Experiment 1 using a more rigorous experimental design, in which the possible effect of outcome favourability was excluded. The results of both experiments consistently showed that procedural fairness positively predicted cooperative behaviour, and this association was significant in high-self-esteem individuals, but not in low-self-esteem individuals. These findings shed light on the vital role of self-esteem in understanding the relationship between procedural fairness and cooperative behaviour.